Dr. Pat Suarez has been a highly productive postdoc with Dr. Jones at the NIH for three years. Though excited to begin a second postdoc at the University of GreatState (UofG) in a weeks time, Pat is torn. He just received data back for samples he had submitted to the NIH Sequencing Core. The data are from patients with the disease that the Jones lab studies, and the results are expected to provide insights into why some patients are unresponsive to treatment.

Pat offered to undertake the bioinformatics analysis of the data even though he was formally leaving the lab, but Dr. Jones was resistant. He gave as his reason that Pat should immerse himself in the work of his new lab, but he also had in mind that the analysis would be a good first project for the new computationally-trained postdoc scheduled to join the lab in a few days. Dr. Jones reminds Pat of all he has accomplished in three years and assures Pat that he would be co-first author on the primary publication from the project.

Though Pat highly respects Dr. Jones, he decides that Jones couldnt possibly be unhappy if he was able to rapidly analyze the sequencing data after leaving the lab (working evenings and weekends). On his way into lab on his last day, Pat stops to purchase a high-capacity flash drive at his favorite computer supply store and copies the data files. He finally finishes late in the evening; grabs the three lab notebooks hes filled over the years and heads for the door.

Answer the following in a paragraph:

1. Who owns the data generated by an NIH lab or research group?

2. Does Pat have the authority to take copies of the sequencing data with him? What about the lab notebooks?

3. How could this situation have been better managed by Dr. Jones?